Tuesday, October 01, 2013

Bush Sr is at his most sinister in a YouTube video in which he promises a "New World Order". It's creepy --the gleam in his eye, his evil grin, the quaver in his voice. Admittedly --Bush Sr is creepy. But this performance is off the boards.

NWO means different things to different people. As a result, very little written about it is meaningful or significant. Hitler had in mind a world dominated by the Third Reich. But recent use of the term does not necessarily mean Nazism. In some cases, it may be worse. Muddying the waters is the "Illuminati Conspiracy" which gets mixed up with with other theories about Jesuits, international bankers and an international conspiracy of Jews. Who can sort all this stuff out?

There was, in fact, an Illuminati in Europe at the time of the 'Enlightenment'. How the term came to be associated with an obvious and criminal conspiracy like the Skull and Bones, I will never know. I do know this: SCOTUS, Federal Law, numerous lesser courts, a saint (St. Thomas More) and numerous state laws, ordinances and regulations all recognize the fact that crimes not involving conspiracies tend to be petty --simple theft, robbery, mugging etc.
Real crimes --like those perped by Enron upon the state of California --are simply impossible for one person working alone. The sheer scale of such crimes requires conspiracy.

The genocide of Jews by Hitler's Third Reich 'required' the bureaucracy of the Third Reich. A lone maniac could not possibly have murdered the millions who perished during the rise and fall of the Third Reich. The minutes of Heydrich's meeting at Wannsee are a testament to the coordinated planning required to pull off the murder of millions of people. One person --a lone gunman in a depository window --cannot contemplate or 'pull off' such a crime.

Director Stanly Kubrick must surely have believed in the Illuminati. 'Eyes Wide Shut' with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman was Kubrick's take on the effect that an evil and kooky cult might have on individuals. Religious folk would say of 'members' that they had 'sold their souls'. Is that not what church people themselves have done? In psychological terms, they have surrendered to the church. The thing to be remembered is this: such groups have NO POWER but the power that is given them by their victims.

With regard to politics, the Skull and Bones is such a group! That they exist is a fact. They have no power but the monies that are bequeathed them by wealthy Yale alumni and the oaths required of their pledges. This combination is most powerful when the initiate is a believer.

I took an oath once! I pledged an honorary fraternity at University. But the oath I took was to "integrity", "scholarship" and the "pursuit of truth". I am very, very comfortable with that oath as I believe it to be the basis for a better and more egalitarian world in which individual rights are respected within the framework of a more egalitarian state which respects all peoples and all races. That oath is enough to make me an outlaw among the cultist GOP inclined.

In a nutshell Descartes' "proof" is derived from a definition of God! Simply, God must exist by definition. But that assumes his existence. If it were true, then "God" is the only thing proven to exist by definition.

There are various versions of the Ontological argument. Descartes' version differs from that of St Anselm which was, interestingly, referred to in one of the Indiana Jones movies. Descartes' latter version, indeed, proceeds from the definition of the word "God" and is, therefore, problematic from the outset! How, for example, can the existence of something not already known to exist become an argument for its existence?

For that matter, if the entity (God, in this case) is already KNOWN to exist the 'argument' is superfluous as well as fallacious. What if I imagined or conceived of a 'Big Blue Meanie' and attributed to it the property of existence? I could simply assert that 'big blue meanies' exist by my definition. Someone similarly conceived and defined 'God'. It was left to Descartes to provide the process with an imprimatur of legitimacy and 'logic'.

Descartes often compares the ontological argument to a geometric demonstration, arguing that necessary existence cannot be excluded from idea of God anymore than the fact that its angles equal two right angles, for example, can be excluded from the idea of a triangle. The analogy underscores once again the argument's supreme simplicity. God's existence is purported to be as obvious and self-evident as the most basic mathematical truth. It also attempts to show how the “logic” of the demonstration is rooted in our ordinary reasoning practices.

--Stanford University Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Descartes believed the ontological argument to be a "proof" that followed from the "essence" of "God"! But that assumes the existence of 'God'; or --as lawyers would put it to a judge --it assumes 'facts not in evidence'. If God's existence is in doubt, if it is in "need" of proof, then how may we know that "God" possesses an essence?

It's a circular argument: God exists because God exists! There is much more that can be written about this but, alas, it will not dissuade those who want to believe and who will tolerate fallacies in order to do so. I write this short essay not because I am an 'atheist'. "Atheism" is as irrational as is religion. One cannot prove that God does not exist because nothing meaningful can be said of anything which does not exist. For example: "Blue Meanies do not exist" is meaningless.